Research Officer - Coastal Engineering

Contract Type: Fixed Term until 30/06/2027 Location: Bay Campus, Swansea Closing Date: 4 March 2024 ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY Swansea University is a research-led university that has been making a difference since 1920. The University community thrives on exploration and discovery and offers the right balance of excellent teaching and research, matched by an enviable quality of life. Our stunning waterfront campuses and multicultural community make us a desirable workplace for colleagues from around the world. Our reward and benefits, and ways of working enable those who join us to have enriching careers, matched by an excellent work-life balance. ABOUT THE ROLE The current estimated damage due to coastal flooding in the UK alone is £540 million/year. Coastal flooding will rapidly increase in future, as the UK is expected to face at least 1m of sea level rise by 2100. The need to implement climate-adaptive flood defences has been recognised world-wide. Saltmarshes have been recognised as potential buffers against storm impacts, serving as a Nature-based Solution (NbS) for flood mitigation, which have become favoured options over building hard defences. However, recent research suggests that managing saltmarshes as a flood defence is hindered by unresolved context-dependency where the estuarine environment, marsh morphology and flood drivers define different contexts. The high costs of running computational coastal simulators multiple times over with a diverse and distinct set of parameters prohibits a thorough exploration of the parameters that control the efficacy of saltmarshes. As a result, beyond a general recognition that NbS for flood mitigation are inherently context-dependent, it has been difficult to advance i) fundamental understanding of the key drivers of nature-based flood mitigation, and ii) derive explicit recommendations on how best to manage and configure saltmarshes to meet policy demands. In recent years Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been successfully utilised to solve complex Coastal Engineering problems. In this project, we aim to develop a new emulation tool to unravel context-dependency and assess flood mitigation of saltmarshes by integrating computational modelling and AI. The successful candidate will be working in the Energy and Environment Research Group of the Faculty of Science and Engineering of Swansea University. The group conduct world class research in Coastal Engineering, climate change impacts on the coastal zone, and nature-based coastal management solutions. The candidate will closely work with data scientists and bio scientists of the faculty and be a member of the Climate Action Research Institute of the University. Interview Date: 18 March 2024 Informal Enquiries Harshinie Karunarathna h.u.karunarathna@swansea.ac.uk Alma Rahat a.a.m.rahat@swansea.ac.uk